Io Sono Famosa Qui (Sort Of)

My grandfather was born and lived here until 1905, when he went to America at the age of 17, never to return. Nobody cares except these people. Nobody else vies for the dubious privilege of seeing me on one of my whirlwind visits, or treats me with such unearned affection.

I am staying near Naples with my Zio Pinuccio and Zia Titina in their unusual house filled with art and oddities, its wide sliding doors left open to let the air move around. Two sweet dogs come and go freely, and there are a few chickens and geese in the yard. This afternoon, relatives are coming over for lunch, and the small kitchen is already filled with the aromas of a pasta dish with cheese and zucchini and a pot roasted lamb with yellow potatoes. The table is set with a lavender cloth, blue glasses, and a bowl filled with flower petals and mint leaves.I don't know what happens to me here. I become Cinzia, I guess, and she's always game.

On the night I arrived, I went to a bar with Luca and Gianni -- our grandfathers were brothers-- and Gaetano, a friend. And there I was, after midnight, standing on a sidewalk in Pompeii sipping wine with all the other stay-out-late sippers and smokers and speakers of Italian. This is definitely not my customary habit.

I am gathering new memories. I sat at a table on a rainy day with Luca eating a dove-shaped cake called Columba, and we conversed with the aid of our tablet translators. In Castellammare, Luca, Gianni, and I shared a late-night meal near the waterfront: a bountiful plate of fresh fruit served with three forks. I went for a neighborhood walk by myself just before a storm, watching clouds form above the mountains, smelling honeysuckle and rain, peering into the windows of the stores that lined the shabby street, just being someone in Italy, almost like a local.

And my 90-year-old Zia Anna and I stood on the same balcony where we hugged when I first came here, 30 years ago. Above she's holding up an old family photo, hidden behind it, since she's only about four feet tall.

But it's an important photo, because one of those people is her mother, who was my grandfather's sister. And thus we are connected.

Afterwards Francesco, whose grandmother was that same sister of my grandfather, proudly showed me around his house, gave me a medal of a saint to protect me, and offered loquats, lemons, and berries from the trees outside. He has no doubt that our bond is real, that we are like brother and sister, linked by history and some inexplicable shared sensibility, and this matters.

"Come back in August for the figs,'" he says.

I wish I could.